


the very counterfeit of death

by smilebackwards



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, No Mirakuru, People Stay Friends, Why Is That So Difficult On Arrow, season 1 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 09:30:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10659744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilebackwards/pseuds/smilebackwards
Summary: No,Slade thought, as the bullet sped toward its target.This is a fucking nightmare. Wake up.Because he knew that voice. He’d listened to it whine and spout inane commentary for two years and he’d dreamed it for three more, and it belonged to a dead man.





	the very counterfeit of death

**Author's Note:**

> I know it's been like 4 years but I still have a lot of feelings about how the Slade arc went.
> 
> Title is from _The Odyssey_.

When he’d first gotten the contract, Slade had been surprised that someone was willing to pay such a high bounty on some jumped up Robin Hood vigilante, but half a million wasn’t anything to turn your nose up at. The only reason he hadn’t been on a plane that night was the knowledge of where he’d have to go to collect it. 

Starling City. 

Just the thought of it gave Slade a sudden sharp pang. The kid had loved his goddamn city. 

Slade could practically see him, over-long blond hair flopping into his eyes as he sketched out the skyline with his hands. “You’d hate downtown,” Oliver had said, smiling up from his makeshift bed in the fuselage of their downed plane, “but I think you’ll like the port.”

Slade hadn’t commented on Oliver’s switched tense. The kid had believed they were going to get off that godforsaken island and he’d been half right at least. 

Slade did hate downtown Starling. It was crowded with skyscrapers and light pollution and above everything loomed Queen Consolidated, as if Slade needed the reminder that Oliver Queen ought to have been the one in this city.

Pushing the thought aside, Slade turned south toward the Glades. The Arrow had been frustratingly hard to pin down. Slade had been here three nights now, which was three nights longer than he wanted, and the closest he’d gotten to the man was a whimpering mobster with a carbon arrow through his shoulder. The vigilante was like a ghost, and Slade had enough ghosts.

Luckily, the SCPD seemed as obsessed with the Arrow as Slade’s mysterious employer. The police band was constantly lit up with sightings. The trick was to sort out which ones were the truth and get to the scene before he’d finished doling out his archaic punishments and disappeared. 

Slade was determined that tonight was going to be the night. Most of the vigilante sightings centered around the Glades and the thug left behind with an arrow wound had given up the goods on his boss’s drug running operation with minimal prompting. Slade was perched on the roof of their shady headquarters like a gargoyle, staring into the shadows, when his eyes caught a flash of green.

He catapulted across the alley, knocking the figure sprawling.They tumbled to the ground but the Arrow recovered neatly, turning the momentum of the fall into a backwards somersault and kicking out with his legs to push Slade off him. Slade closed back in quickly, forcing the Arrow toward the edge of the roof. 

The bow caught him by surprise. The Arrow wielded it like a short staff, whipping it at Slade’s ankles and knocking him off balance.

As irritated as he was, Slade would admit to being reluctantly impressed. It had been a long time since someone had tripped him up during hand to hand. But a job was a job and Slade didn’t need to finish it at close range. He pulled his gun from its holster. 

In the reflected glow of the sodium streetlights, they could see each other almost clearly for the first time. The Arrow looked frozen beneath his hood. Slade wondered if he was afraid of guns. It would explain his reliance on a bow. ( _Another kick in the teeth from this goddamn city,_ Slade thought, wounded. The kid had just been getting good with the thing when he’d died.) It would also make him something of an idiot since any street thug could get a semi-automatic for the price of a good steak. 

Slade was tired of wondering and he was tired of this job and this city. He pulled the trigger, just as the Arrow said, “Slade?”

 _No,_ Slade thought, as the bullet sped toward its target. _This is a fucking nightmare. Wake up._ Because he knew that voice. He’d listened to it whine and spout inane commentary for two years and he’d dreamed it for three more, and it belonged to a dead man. 

The Arrow twisted at the last moment. Not enough to avoid the bullet completely but enough for it to hit him closer to the shoulder than the heart. He grunted in pain and staggered backwards.

Slade sprinted toward him as he collapsed to his knees. “Slade?” he said again, the same ridiculous hopeful tone he used to have in his voice when he’d stepped on a landmine or into another absurd scrape and Slade had showed up to berate him and then get him out of it.

Slade pulled off his Deathstroke mask and reached for the Arrow’s hood. Yao Fei’s hood, now that he let himself see it. Shado’s hood. 

“Oliver?” he said, disbelieving, even as the kid’s face was revealed. Oliver’s blond hair was cropped short and he had some kind of green paint smeared around his eyes. He smiled up at Slade as if Slade hadn’t just put a bullet in him.

“You’re alive,” Oliver said. He reached up to put a hand on Slade’s cheek. “I’m so glad.”

Oliver grimaced and his hand dropped away. “Hang on, kid,” Slade said, ripping open his sleeve to check the wound. _Not nearly enough padding,_ he thought, distantly. Couldn’t trust the kid with anything when it came to his own safety. “Hang on.”

Wiping the blood away, Slade pulled off his left glove with his teeth and folded it in half to staunch the wound. “Turn over for me,” he said, manhandling Oliver onto his side.

It didn’t look good. The bullet hadn’t gone through. “You and your luck, kid,” Slade sighed. “We need to get you to a hospital.”

“No,” Oliver said. “No hospitals.”

Slade could see his point. He was an obviously recognizable vigilante, wanted both by legitimate law enforcement and a less legitimate third party who had invested a cool half million in his demise. But breaking him out of prison after the fact was a more palatable option than watching him bleed to death on a rooftop.

“Get me to the foundry,” Oliver gasped. “18th and Marin. I have help.”

“Help with what?” Slade growled as he pulled Oliver’s good arm over his shoulder and dragged him to his feet. “What the hell are you doing out here, shooting criminals with a fucking bow and arrow?”

“I’m protecting my city,” Oliver said, as if that made any sense. He missed a step as they went down the stairwell and fell heavily against Slade’s side on the landing.

“Explain it to me later,” Slade conceded, avoiding the circular glow of a streetlamp as they stumbled out into the empty road. Oliver’s remaining strength was starting to flag by the time they reached 16th Street, his boots scuffing against the concrete. “Almost there,” Slade said. He could see a stylized Q, a faded version of the brightly lit Q Consolidated downtown, on a building a few blocks ahead.

“There’s a gap in the fence,” Oliver said weakly.

“Did I teach you nothing about maintaining proper perimeter defenses?” Slade grumbled as the chainlink gave easily beneath his fingers. 

“There’s doors,” Oliver protested and then he went limp. 

“Fuck. Don’t you dare die on me now, kid.” Slade hauled Oliver over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and pounded his fist on the steel door. “Hey!” he yelled. “He needs help!”

There was a long moment of silence and then the door made the universal sound for unlocking, tumblers sliding loudly back, and edged open a crack. Slade kicked it in without preamble and thundered down the stairs.

Two people were waiting at the bottom. A blonde standing in front of a computer chair, open-mouthed in shock, and a man with a gun aimed steadily at Slade’s chest. 

“Oh my God, what happened to him?” the blonde said, taking a step toward them.

The man side-stepped in front of her, protective. “Who the hell are you?”

“He’s been shot,” Slade said, leaving off that he’d done the shooting. From the look on the man’s face, the obfuscation hadn’t eased his suspicions.

“Dig,” the blonde said, practically vibrating in place, “he needs help.”

Oliver chose this moment to groan theatrically and regain some semblance of consciousness. “I’m fine, Felicity,” he said, patently unconvincing. “Dig, please don’t shoot Slade.” 

“That would be preferable,” Slade agreed. He swiped a table clean of arrows—exactly how many fucking arrows did Oliver think he was going to need?—and deposited Oliver on it instead. 

Felicity hurried over with a silver kidney bowl stuffed full with gauze, a pair of thin tongs, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. “Not exactly the ER,” Slade said dubiously, sterilizing the tongs.

“We’ve done worse,” Oliver said, wincing as Felicity helped peel him out of his leather top.

“We didn’t have a level one trauma center available five miles down the road,” Slade pointed out.

“It’s fine, Slade,” Oliver said, lying back on the table. “Just get the bullet out.”

Slade paused, tongs drooping as he surveyed Oliver’s bared chest. There was the familiar arrow wound in the right shoulder from Yao Fei and the fresh bullet hole in the left shoulder courtesy of Slade himself, but scattered across Oliver’s torso were half a dozen new scars Slade had never seen on him. The tissue was raised and ropy in some places and flat from cauterization in others. “Christ, kid,” Slade said hoarsely. That looked like an acid burn on his right pectoral. “What happened?”

Oliver frowned and glanced down, like he didn’t even register the scars anymore. “The island happened,” he said. “And A.R.G.U.S. And Russia.”

Russia triggered something in Slade’s brain. That new tattoo looked a lot like one he’d seen on a member of the Solntsevskaya Bratva. “Tатуировка?” he asked in Russian, testing.

“Cувенир,” Oliver replied automatically, in kind.

“I’m going to get this bullet out and then we’re going to have a talk,” Slade said, positioning the tongs.

Oliver bit silently down on what looked like a scrap of Kevlar as Slade dug for the bullet. On the island he would have screamed loud enough to bring Fyers’ men down on them. Slade probably would have needed to knock him out.

“Got it,” Slade said, finally, after a minute of what he knew from past experience was excruciating pain. He dropped the misshapen bullet into the kidney bowl.

“Great,” Oliver groaned. “I feel much better now. I’m just going to...rest my eyes.” Then he passed out.

“Yeah, sleep tight, kid,” Slade said, running a hand over Oliver’s shorn hair. 

“I’ll ask again,” Dig said from where he’d been standing like a guard, arms crossed. “Who the hell are you?” 

“I’m a friend of Oliver’s. And two hours ago I would have sworn to God he died on Lian Yu,” Slade said numbly, struck again by the impossibility.

They’d all been suffering from cabin fever the day the helicopter came. Shado had escaped to the woods to hunt and Oliver had retreated to fiddle with his broken radio equipment until Slade snapped at him to do something useful and get a fire going. He’d regretted that, later, almost more than anything—the dejected _are you mad at me_ look on Oliver’s face.

Slade almost didn’t recognize the _whup whup whup_ of the rotor blades for what they were. Oliver looked up toward the sky, head tilted questioningly.

“Get Shado,” Slade ordered. “Meet me at the airstrip.” He kicked dirt over Oliver’s sad attempt at a fire as the kid sprinted away. A helicopter could mean a lot of things. Supply drop. A new crop of soldiers. But mostly, it meant a way off this godforsaken island.

A soft patter of rain started to fall from the dark clouds overhead as Slade made his way toward the airstrip. He crouched behind the treeline and watched the helicopter land, two of Fyers’ men directing it down. The engine cut off and the pilot exited the cockpit. Fyers’ men hauled open the cabin door and three more men in dark military coveralls jumped out. 

Slade considered the odds. Three against six wasn’t too terrible. Oliver might only count as half a combatant but Shado and Slade could make up the difference.

A twig snapped behind him and Slade turned abruptly, knife in hand. Oliver’s face made a _sorry_ expression. It was one he used a lot. Slade didn’t like to admit how endearing he found it. 

Shado took in the situation at a glance, her eyes pulled toward the helicopter like a magnet. “I can fly it,” she said. Slade was unsurprised. He hadn’t found much of anything yet that Shado couldn’t do. Slade could probably fly the helicopter if pressed, but Billy had been the primary pilot between them.

“We’re getting the hell off this island today,” Slade said. “I’ll take the three men on the left.” They were clustered together around a cargo box. Easier targets than if they’d been spread out. “Shado, the two on the right.” Shado nodded agreement.

“Oliver, you take the guy with the headset around his neck,” Slade said. The pilot was a good forty pounds lighter than the rest of the men. 

A crack of thunder sounded and the sky opened up, soft rain turning hard. Fyers’ men glanced up in irritation. One of them swore. 

“Go!” Slade signalled, while they were distracted, and he, Shado and Oliver sprinted out of cover toward their targets. They were almost on top of them before one of the men noticed and shouted a warning, hand going for his sidearm. Slade grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted until he dropped it, then a little more until his wrist snapped and he cried out in pain. Pulling his katana from its sheath, Slade slashed downward and pivoted to block the strike of the second man. 

His third target was at the base of the helicopter, shouting into the radio. _Fuck._ They needed to get in the air quickly before reinforcements showed up. 

Slade’s current combatant backed up quickly and drew a machete. He feinted left and swung right. Slade caught the machete on his katana, the metal ringing, and twisted to unlock the blades, scoring a deep gash across the other man’s forearm. The man winced backward and Slade pressed his advantage, slicing him across the shoulder and then pulling him down until his jaw met Slade’s knee and unconsciousness followed.

Out of the corner of his eye, Slade saw Oliver use a takedown move he’d taught him on the pilot and felt a small burst of pride. 

Shado’s targets were already on the ground, unmoving. She ran for the helicopter and slammed the butt of a pistol against the temple of the man on the radio. He dropped like a stone. “Get in!” she yelled, jumping into the cockpit and beginning the start up sequence.

Slade paused at the helicopter door, turning toward the sound of shouting coming from the woods. Fyer’s reinforcements had arrived.

Oliver picked up a gun and fired at them. Badly, but any cover fire was better than none. Slade wrenched open the cabin door and clambered in. “C’mon, kid!”

The helicopter started to rise. “Oliver, now!” Slade snapped. Oliver was still thirty feet away and the helicopter was chest high off the ground. Shado was going to have to set back down or Oliver was going to have to jump.

Oliver was a good sprinter when he was being shot at. “Keep going. I’ll get him,” Slade shouted to Shado. He braced his feet against either side of the cabin door and leaned out, hands reaching down past the struts. “Jump, kid!”

Oliver jumped.

For a second Slade didn’t think he was going to make it, and then their hands connected around each other's wrists. Oliver lifted his legs out of the way as they cleared the treetops and made for the shore.

“Hold him!” Shado yelled over the thunder as she fought for control of the stick. The helicopter lurched with sickening turbulence. 

Bullets strafed the exterior hull, harsh _tap tap tap tap tap taps_ , and then the quieter sound of shattering glass. Shado cried out from the cockpit and the helicopter swung sharply off course. “Shado!” Slade shouted.

“I can’t—,” she called back over the rushing wind.

“Slade, you have to let me go,” Oliver yelled. “You have to help Shado!” Lightning flickered across the sky, illuminating his pale eyes. The fear in them made Slade’s chest clench. It must have been a night just like this that had stranded Oliver on the island in the first place. 

“Don’t be stupid, kid!” They were over the ocean now but that was no kind of guarantee of a soft landing.

Oliver looked over his shoulder at the vanishing coastline. Any further and it would be too far to swim back. “Let me go or we’ll all die!”

Slade watched the fear in Oliver’s eyes harden to resolve. “No. No, kid, don’t,” he said. He’d tightened his hold on Oliver’s arms but Oliver was a hundred and ninety pounds of hanging weight; he’d had all the leverage. 

“Shengcún,” Oliver said and then he’d twisted his wrists outward—a move Slade had taught him—broken Slade’s grip and knifed down into the dark, choppy water.

It had taken Slade four months to convince ASIS to send a plane back to Lian Yu. Four months of debriefing and yelling and eventually blackmailing. He’d burned all his bridges with the Australian government by the time he and Shado were allowed a bushplane with GPS, and it had all been for nothing.

They’d run for the downed plane as soon as they’d landed. “Oliver!” Shado called, rushing back outside when it became clear that Oliver wasn’t there. “Oliver!”

Slade paused inside the fuselage and looked around. Everything looked the same as he remembered it when they’d made their escape. The thin blanket and spare jacket that passed for bedding in the corner. The remnants of a sloppily smothered fire. There was a layer of dead leaves covering the ground.

He hadn’t been able to find the keffiyeh he left behind but it had probably blown away or been picked up by a bird for nesting. It wasn’t as if the plane was particularly well-protected from the elements. He and Oliver used to huddle together at night to keep warm. Oliver had wept once, muffled into his arm, but obvious. Slade wished he’d given him the comfort of a lie, a gruff “everything will be all right”, over the way he’d pretended not to see. 

He and Shado had fanned out and crisscrossed the entire island, searching fruitlessly. There was no sign of Fyers’ men either, the campsites broken down so thoroughly that only the cleared areas of forest showed they’d existed at all. 

Slade and Shado stayed for three cold, quiet nights before leaving a pack with a sat phone and flares, two dozen MREs and a Milky Way that Slade had snuck into a front pocket. It felt more like a shrine than hope.

“You will tell his family?” Shado said heavily as they watched the island recede into the distance. 

“Yeah,” Slade had said, throat tight. “I’ll tell them.”

 

Slade stared down at Oliver’s lax features. He still looked ridiculously young even without his floppy hair. 

“You didn’t hear about his return from the dead?” Diggle asked, skeptical. “It was kind of a big deal.” 

“I don’t keep up on your American news,” Slade said. “It’s all Kardashians and Biebers.” He swiped at the green paint around Oliver’s eyes. “What the fuck, kid, did you steal your sister’s eyeshadow?”

Dig snorted. “We’ve been trying to tell him that’s not an effective mask.”

“Why are you letting him run around in a mask in the first place?” Slade asked, angrily.

Dig looked at him coolly. “I’m not _letting_ him do anything. Oliver has his reasons.”

Slade scoffed and turned away. He wandered the length of the room, looking around the way he hadn’t had time to when dragging a bleeding Oliver to safety and performing trauma surgery. It was a whole underground _base._ Nicer than half the safehouses Slade had. There were rows of neatly nocked arrows, workout equipment, computer banks where Felicity was scrolling through databases that Slade had paid contractors thousands to hack. He couldn’t imagine what possible reasons could have led the clumsy, loud-mouthed kid he’d known to this.

Slade picked up a proper, polished escrima stick—a sleek cousin to the rough-cut bamboo that were all he’d had to train Oliver with—and twirled it skillfully. Replacing it on its stand, he flipped open his burner phone and called the only number programmed in.

“Is it done?” the voice on the other end asked without greeting.

“No,” Slade snapped. “And it’s not going to be done. I’ll wire back the down payment. And if I hear the target has been handed off to another bounty hunter, you’ll be the next target in my sights.” He hung up without waiting for a reply.

“I always knew you cared,” Oliver said wryly. 

Slade spun around, surprised. Oliver still looked a little shaky but he’d been able to approach without Slade realizing. One more change that Slade would have once considered for the better. Now he wasn’t so sure. 

“We came back for you,” Slade said, because of course he’d cared. “Shado and I. We came back for you on Lian Yu.” Christ, he needed to call Shado. 

“I knew you would,” Oliver said, his eyes sad. “I just wasn’t there anymore.”

Slade wasn’t sure which question to ask first. _Where were you? Who taught you hand to hand in a way that stuck? How did you get all those damn scars and where do the fuckers that gave them to you lay their heads?_ He kept coming back to, “Oliver, why are you running around shooting people with a bow and arrow?” The rest could come later.

“My father gave me this,” Oliver said, pulling a small bound book from his pocket and tossing it onto the table beside his fletching. “He told me he’d failed this city, that he’d gotten rich off it’s corruption. He asked me to right his wrongs.”

That had been another kick in the chest when Slade visited the Queen mansion on his first visit to Starling. Moira Queen had run her fingers along the edges of a framed photo of Oliver and an older blond man with a square jaw before turning it face-down on the side table and looking at Slade with open distrust. “And what news do you claim to bring me about my husband and son, Mr. Wilson?”

 _Your husband?_ Slade had thought, mouth gone dry. He’d wracked his brain after being shown the door, but in two years, he couldn’t remember Oliver ever breathing a word about his father.

“Kid,” Slade said, gently. “Why didn’t you tell me your father died on that boat?”

Oliver’s eyes shuttered like windows in a storm. “I didn’t want to talk about it.” 

“I’m sorry,” Slade said. He’d forced Oliver out to the shore and practically held him under the waves to face his fear of the water. You couldn’t survive on an island and expect you’d never have to swim. “I still would have made you get back in the water, but I’d have been kinder about it if I’d known your father drowned.”

“He didn’t drown,” Oliver said, his reticence on the topic apparently outweighed by the need for clarity. “We made it to a lifeboat. Dad and me and the captain. We drifted for days. It was exhausting and pointless and I just wanted to give up. We were almost out of fresh water when my dad picked up the gun. He said if anyone was going to survive, it was going to be me. Then he shot the captain.” Oliver swallowed. “Then he shot himself in the head.”

 _Hell,_ Slade thought. _No wonder you’re so fucked up._

“His body washed up on the shore,” Oliver continued, blank-faced. “I buried him there, in purgatory.”

Slade thought back to the island. When he and Oliver used to run for training they’d go for miles down the sandy coast. Oliver always made them stop at a rock outcropping, even once he’d reached the point of endurance where he could have kept going.

“I’m sorry,” Slade said again. He picked up the book and thumbed through the pages. _Adam Hunt. Scott Morgan. Frank Bertinelli. Justin Claybourne._ Some of the names were crossed out.

“Let’s go home,” Oliver said. “You can meet my mom and Thea.”

Slade winced. “I’ve met your family already. You asked me once to tell them what happened if you died. I tried, but apparently there was some kind of reward for information on you and they thought I was a gold digger.”

He remembered the freezing disdain on Moira Queen’s face when he’d tried to prove he’d known Oliver. He’d told her the kid’s favorite book was _The Odyssey_ and she’d laughed in his face. Apparently that his favorite food was rabbit wasn’t the right answer either.

Oliver’s sister had come in during the interview. “You’ve seen Ollie?” she’d asked, the hope on her face painfully reminiscent of her brother.

“He’d dead,” Slade had said bluntly, never one to sugarcoat the truth. Thea choked on a sob and fled the room. Slade had been unceremoniously forced out the door soon after.

“I made your sister cry,” Slade admitted. “Your mother kicked me out of the house.”

“Don’t worry,” Oliver smiled, throwing his good arm around Slade’s shoulder. “They’ll love you this time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Translations:  
> Tатуировка? - The tattoo?  
> Cувенир - A souvenir  
> Shengcún - Survive


End file.
